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Review on πŸ” Sabrent USB 3.0 Sharing Switch: Effortless Multiple Computer & Peripheral Sharing with LED Device Indicators (USB-SW30) by Jonathan Jensen

Revainrating 3 out of 5

Very fur. Even at a retail price of $15, it's doubtful it's worth it

I've been using it since April. I usually use KVM switches, but my favorite brand's newer Displayport 1.4 models aren't compatible with my Dell WD19TB docking station, so I decided to just use my monitor's DP and HDMI ports to switch between computers and such to switch something that is connected to a hub. I've had a few issues with it, but have overcome most of them until recently. To do this I connected a USB hub to the input and port A to the laptop dock and port B to the desktop. My mouse, keyboard, gamepad and so on were plugged into a USB hub. Note that this is a self-powered hub, so power consumption shouldn't be an issue. Regularly, something would just stop working until I unplugged it and plugged it back into the hub. I've tried a few different hubs, different units of the same model and another from a completely different manufacturer, same problem no matter what.2. The view is automatically selected at random. Not like the "it randomly decides to switch inputs" case, that would be a lot worse, but I leave my desktop off most of the time. If I accidentally turn it off/unplug it from the laptop dock, sometimes it defaults to desktop and sometimes it doesn't. Not a big deal, just unpredictable when I'm doing something as simple as rewiring (accommodating at home/starting work from home meant a lot of "what if I pull that over" situations.)3. I decided to solve some of these problems by buying a separate dedicated USB hub switch for my keyboard/mouse/gamepad and connecting it to my USB audio DAC. I thought it would be nice to be able to leave audio on my laptop's dock if I had to switch to the desktop for a moment. I got a new Sabrent USB hub with rental power, plugged it directly into my laptop dock, and plugged this USB switch into it. The USB audio just died before the song finished playing while I was testing it. Plugged it into the USB-C adapter on my laptop's dock (it has very few USB ports), worked for a while but stopped again after 30-45 minutes. It is offline now. I could keep playing with it, I honestly think most of the problems are with it drawing power from the host devices it's connected to. Seems logical, but I find the way it's implemented bad. If you just need something simple, or if you're using a device you don't use often, that's probably fine. You may need to play around with this on a regular basis, but it will probably work for the most part. Several people report that it blew up their computers. So I'm pretty sure it's a power draw issue.

Pros
  • Good product for its price
Cons
  • Not happy with everything